\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDespite her [Marie Bracquemond] gifts, despite her striving, despite\u00a0 her enthusiasm, the day came when with an obscure feeling of grief, she had to confess herself beaten.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — Jean-Paul Bouillon, \u201cMarie Bracquemond: The Lady with the Parasol\u201d (Women Impressionists<\/em>, p. 242).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Never met a ladder I liked \u2013<\/p>\n not the trap door pull-down device<\/p>\n to my childhood attic, nor the sketchy plywood versions<\/p>\n in construction sites where my brothers hid<\/p>\n and snickered as we circled below, our bikes<\/p>\n tied outside like royal steeds.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But that never stopped me<\/p>\n hauling myself up, hand over hand, until<\/p>\n I reached the upper limits, and could rest<\/p>\n hands on hips, as if lord<\/p>\n of all I surveyed below.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Blame it on grandma who climbed<\/p>\n a ladder at 82 to prune her trees,<\/p>\n and fell, breaking her back in two places<\/p>\n then recovering in one sweet week, as if<\/p>\n such a fall only required dusting oneself off,<\/p>\n then retying your apron strings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Never met a ladder that made me sad<\/p>\n until I saw Woman on a Stepladder<\/em> \u2013<\/p>\n why did you stop drawing?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n —-response to Marie Bracquemond Woman on a Stepladder,<\/em> 1882 (private collection; printed in Women Impressionists<\/em> p. 243)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cDespite her [Marie Bracquemond] gifts, despite her striving, despite\u00a0 her enthusiasm, the day came when with an obscure feeling of grief, she had to confess herself beaten.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 — Jean-Paul Bouillon, \u201cMarie Bracquemond: The Lady with the Parasol\u201d (Women Impressionists, p. 242). Never…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":768,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/768"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40966"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40990,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40966\/revisions\/40990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}